Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [307]
His eyes were open, and when he saw Sam, he smiled. 'Not ... bad,' he whispered. 'I bet you ... didn't know you had it ... in you.'
Sam felt a tremendous, buoyant sense of relief. 'No,' he said. 'I didn't.' He bent down and held three fingers in front of Dave's eyes. 'How many fingers do you see?'
'About ... seventy-four,' Dave whispered.
'I'll call the ambulance,' Naomi said, and started to get up. Dave's left hand grasped her wrist before she could.
'No. Not yet.' His eyes shifted to Sam. 'Bend down. I need to whisper.'
Sam bent over the old man. Dave put a trembling hand on the back of his neck. His lips tickled the cup of Sam's ear and Sam had to force himself to hold steady -it tickled. 'Sam,' he whispered. 'She waits. Remember ... she waits.'
'What?' Sam asked. He felt almost totally unstrung. 'Dave, what do you mean?'
But Dave's hand had fallen away. He stared up at Sam, through Sam, his chest rising shallowly and rapidly.
'I'm going,' Naomi said, clearly upset. 'There's a telephone down there on the cataloguing desk.'
'No,' Sam said.
She turned toward him, eyes glaring, mouth pulled back from neat white teeth in a fury. 'What do you mean, no? Are you crazy? His skull is fractured, at the very least! He's -'
'He's going, Sarah,' Sam said gently. 'Very soon. Stay with him. Be his friend.'
She looked down, and this time she saw what Sam had seen. The pupil of Dave's left eye had drawn down to a pinpoint; the pupil of his right was huge and fixed.
'Dave?' she whispered, frightened. 'Dave?'
But Dave was looking at Sam again. 'Remember,' he whispered. 'She W ... '
His eyes grew still and fixed. His chest rose once more ... dropped ... and did not rise again.
Naomi began to sob. She put his hand against her cheek and closed his eyes. Sam knelt down painfully and put his arm around her waist.
CHAPTER 15
Angle Street (III)
1
That night and the next were sleepless ones for Sam Peebles. He lay awake in his bed, all the second-floor lights turned on, and thought about Dave Duncan's last words: She waits.
Toward dawn of the second night, he began to believe he understood what the old man had been trying to say.
2
Sam thought that Dave would be buried out of the Baptist Church in Proverbia, and was a little surprised to find that he had converted to Catholicism at some point between 1960 and 1990. The services were held at St Martin's on April 11th, a blustery day that alternated between clouds and cold early-spring sunshine.
Following the graveside service, there was a reception at Angle Street. There were almost seventy people there, wandering through the downstairs rooms or clustered in little groups, by the time Sam arrived. They had all known Dave, and spoke of him with humor, respect, and unfailing love. They drank ginger ale from Styrofoam cups and ate small finger sandwiches. Sam moved from group to group, passing a word with someone he knew from time to time but not stopping to chat. He rarely took his hand from the pocket of his dark coat. He had made a stop at the Piggly Wiggly store on his way from the church, and now there were half a dozen cellophane packages in there, four of them long and thin, two of them rectangular.
Sarah was not here.
He was about to leave when he spotted Lukey and Rudolph sitting together in a corner. There was a cribbage board between them, but they didn't seem to be playing.
'Hello, you guys,' Sam said, walking over. 'I guess you probably don't remember me -'
'Sure we do,' Rudolph said. 'Whatcha think we are? Coupla feebs? You're Dave's friend. You came over the day we was making the posters.'
'Right!' Lukey said.
'Did you find those books you were lookin for?' Rudolph asked.
'Yes,' Sam said, smiling. 'I did, eventually.'
'Right!' Lukey exclaimed.
Sam brought out the four slender cellophane packages. 'I brought you guys